Pengo Adventure
Release type: Freeware
Release date: April 30th, 1995
Levels: 7
Author: Pierre Martin, Sylvain Martin
Website: Bilou Homebrew's Blog
Related games: Penguin Pete
Not to be mistaken for Joan Stone's Penguin Pete or Brandon Enterprises' Penguin War.
PPP Team’s first game arose as many first projects do, as a collage. Pengo Adventure is a tribute to Donkey Kong, assembled with a mix of borrowed parts and original elements. The character is RSD’s own Penguin Pete, lifted from Tutor largely intact. The backgrounds are both minimalist and fiddly but mostly original, save the odd decoration. Sounds are a mix of borrowed material and original samples.
Although the game has its charms -- in particular the premise of penguin romance and the atmosphere in some of the later levels -- and you can see the budding style that would later declare itself in games like Badman 2, Pengo is just awkward to play. As Sylvain Martin has observed, RSD’s engine does not handle ladders as well as it might. There are ways to make it work, but it’s annoying – and when you’re paying tribute to Donkey Kong, you want the ladders to be perfect. So that’s a pretty inherent problem. A more manageable issue is player control.
As adorable as he might be, Pete’s control mapping has always been a problem even in his own game. Taken out of context, with few to no changes, Pete has trouble just leaping from platform to platform. What PPP Team really needed to do was either design a new character from scratch or to ditch Pete’s character file and rebuild it with a mind to their planned game concept.
Still, for a first game, Pengo Adventure explores just about every aspect of Game-Maker’s design options. It exhibits intertitles and introduction screens, full sound and music support, and just about every basic block feature. Even here there’s an understanding of contextual background properties, and the way to get around certain collision issues by swapping static monsters for background tiles. By many users’ standards, this would be a fairly advanced game. So, not a bad way to start.
Contents
Story[edit]
Pengo Adventure is a platform game.
The wee Princess Lily has been taken by a mad bubble, and Pengo must travel through various levels to save her.
In this version (1.1):
- New York
- Egypt
- Ice Land
- Final Battle (in space)
Instructions[edit]
For best results, use the numerical keypad.
Uses a VGA card and Sound Blaster.
- F8 = Enable Joystick
- F9 = Calibration
Shareware version 1.1 (03/01/95)
Credits[edit]
Produced in JAN 1995 by PPP Team Studios (Piet-Pierrick-Pypein)
- SCENARIO: Piet
- GRAPHIC DESIGN: Piet
- MUSIC: Game-Maker
- Sound: Piet
- Design: Piet & Pypein
- Testing: Pypein
! Please forgive our sins of youth !
PS: searching for a publisher.
The shareware version of Game-Maker allowed games to be freely distributed to a maximum of 25 people. Pengo was thus "dedicated" to :
Stephane BEELEN, Pascal DEITING, Melanie FLECHET, GILLES Claire, Alain GILLON, HANSEN Pierrick, Pierre MARTIN, Stephane PIROTTE, Philippe Rousselle, Xavier STRIVAY, Julien STASSART, Vivien Vanoirbeek, Sebastien VALENTI, Cedric VANRUTTEN, Sandrine WARNAND, and their family members.
Availability[edit]
Prior to this archive's online presence, this game was only available in small-scale distribution amongst the close associates of PPP Team.
Archive History[edit]
Along with several other PPP Team titles, this game was added to the archive on September 29, 2010. It was located on an FTP archive maintained by Pierre Martin, after contact with his brother Sylvain Martin, through his blog and social media -- who in turn was located through a link on cly5m's Game-Maker page.
Links[edit]
Sites[edit]
Interviews / Articles[edit]
- Displays of Affection (DIYGamer)
Misc. Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Pengo Adventure (277.6 kB)
- Cyborg Jeff's intro music (74.2 kB)
